Huxley - Brave New World

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
Sacrificing Shakespeare in the name of the Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy?

Brave New World was written by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1932 and derived its title from The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare, namely from its heroine Miranda’s speech which is at the same time both ironic and naive. Miranda, raised her whole life on a solitary island, comes to encounter people for the first time only to find drunken sailors and their ship which they happened to wreck. The line is: O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in it!Aldous Huxley’s ironic allegory is quite clear. It is the future into which we project our hopes and dreams and it is the future again who twists and turns them into ludicrous dissapointments. But at least the citizens of Huxley’s dreamworld are unaware of their absurd condition and float through their existence with ease that men of today can hardly come to know. Written during The Great Depression and inspired by the novels of H. G. Wells, Huxley’s Brave New World tells the story of a suprisingly happy and contended society (one should bear in mind that this book is usually labeled as dystopian fiction, genre which relishes in apocalyptic and catastrophical visions of the future). People are not born but grown (in the book’s words ˈdecantedˈ), they are specifically conditioned through various means such as sleep-teaching to love what they would otherwise hate and to think only within the confines of their caste, they are distracted by the consumerist nature of their world to buy new and throw away the old, to dread solitude and to never doubt, question or fear. The need for religion and self-transcendence is achieved through the use of hallucinogen called soma. And into this world of blissful ignorance arrives John the Savage, the novel’s protagonist though he does not make an appearance until the middle of the narrative. He...

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...Future Predictions Anyone?
Although many similarities exist between Aldous Huxley's A BraveNewWorld and George Orwell's 1984, they are more divergent than alike. A BraveNewWorld is a novel about the struggle of Bernard Marx, who rejects the tenants of his society when he discovers that he is not truly happy. 1984 is the story of Winston who finds forbidden love within the hypocrisy of his society. In both cases, the main characters are in quiet rebellions against their government, which are eventually found to be unsuccessful.
Huxley wrote A BraveNewWorld in the third person so that the reader could be allotted a more comprehensive view of the activities he presents. His characters are shallow and cartoon-like in order to better reflect the society in which they are entrapped. In this society, traditional notions of love and what ideally should result have long been disregarded and despised, "Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet". The comparison to a wild jet is intended to demonstrate the inherent dangers of these activities. Many of the "BraveNew World's" social norms are intended to "save" its citizens from anything unpleasant by depriving them of the opportunity to miss anything overly pleasant.
The society...

...March 2013
BraveNewWorld Group Essay
After battling a disease of the eye at age sixteen leaving him temporarily blind, Aldous Huxley’s dreams of going into a scientific or medical profession ended. Yet, he kept his critical, scientific way of thinking long after he stopped studying science and applied that thinking process and sense of detail to the many writings he did, whether it be an essay, poem, novel, or even art or music critique. In his dystopian novel BraveNewWorld, Huxley “combines [his] comprehensive scientific knowledge with satire to project a future totalitarianism state based on values and trends of the modern world.” (Aldous, Contemporary Literacy Criticism). Huxley’s purpose for writing the novel was to warn the world of what society could become had it kept taking steps towards totalitarianism. These views came from the author’s scientific background and the events going on in society at the time it was published.
Huxley was born to a family of scientists. His grandfather, brother, and half-brother were biologists, his half-brother even won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963 for his research, and his father wrote scientific essays. Huxley was first educated in medicine and the arts and sciences, but after recovering from his illness studied literature at Balliol College in Oxford and created a career...

...Aldous Huxley’s , satirical novel BraveNewWorld was written during post world war 1 ,1931, the values and issues which he indirectly expresses through this novel are influenced by the context of his era. The novel insinuates the negative ramifications of the current economic, social, scientific and political progress, highlighting its implications on the future in a negative, dystopic light. He achieves this through the creation of a dystopic, immoral and inhumane city (World State) where valuable human assets such as individuality, imagination and free thought are completely stripped of citizens. This BraveNewWorld is now driven in the pursuit of only material success and universal happiness this is driven by the forced values such as consumerism, class division and through the distribution of soma ( a drug which gives the user a sense of euphoria) . Aldous Huxley is warning the reader , we as a civilisation can achieve social stability, a sense of happiness and a world plentiful of material reward but at what cost. The cost: Imagination free thought individuality and high art , these are the traits that humans desire the most, intellectual freedom is what has allowed humanity to achieve the fragile society we have today with out we aren’t humans but merely thoughtless ,meaningless and controlled beings , dehumanised machines....

...A BraveNewWorld- Aldous Huxley
A BraveNewWorld is based in the future; where human life is being controlled by a few people at the top of a World State. The book opens up with a group of students are going on a tour of a factory called the Hatcheries that produces human beings. The Director of the Hatcheries explains to the students how humans are born into the world. They are born into five castles that include Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon.
The Director leads the students into the Nursery part of the factory. When the students walk into the nursery they see a group of eight-month-old babies wearing the Delta caste’s khakis-colored clothes. The nursery uses the technique of electric shock to teach babies what to be afraid of. For example, in Chapter 2 the nursery presents flowers and books to the babies, and as they crawl toward the objects, they get a mild electric shock; the same process happens 200 times, and the children have a hatred of books and flowers.
As the tour continues, The Director tells a story about how hypnopaedia, or sleep teaching was discovered. The students then go outside and discover children running around naked, and the students learn that the children are engaging in erotic play time. In the factory, nothing seems to go wrong. Everyone in the factor seems to do what they are supposed to be doing. It...

...BraveNewWorld – Aldous Huxley
Reading Log
Chapter
Who? New students; the DHC; Henry Foster; Lenina
Where? London, central Hatchery and Conditioning Centre: Fertilizing Room, Decanting Room, ...
What? The DHC shows new students the CLHCC. Explains the Society (production of people, alpha, beta, gamma, epsilon; etc.) Henry Foster, his assistent, sees Lenina, with whom he has a date
Comments: no individuality in this world; DHC is very important; manipulation
Chapter
Who? DHC, new students, infants, nurses
Where? Still in the CLHCC: Infantnurseries
What? The DHC shows the students the Conditioning Rooms, where the children are manipulated by psychologic methods (sleepteaching [hypnopaedia], extreme noise, …)
Comments: the produced children are helpless, they can not grow on their own, this moves readers from today, because we live in a world, where everybody craves for freedome, own decisions and a free developement, and babies are cute and poor
Chapter
Who? DHC, Mustapha Mond, new students; Henry Foster + Friend; Lenina, Fanny
Where? Still the CLHCC; girls dressing room; the lift
What? Children play erotic games, and the students watch them. Mustapha Mond tells the students how awfull it is, to be mother, and to bear children; Lenina and Fanny talk about boys, that Lenina goes out for a few months with...

...﻿
BraveNewWorld by Aldous Huxley is a novel about the future of the world being a dystopian society in which the populous is kept ignorantly complacent. What makes this book unique is not that it is a book about what the future will bring, but that it is an indirect source of the cost of what such a future entails. Huxley also has a feverish use of reader assumption, often leaving readers to guess the outcome of situations through description and well placed hints. Lastly, Huxley seems to have a pension for being exact in both percentages that are used by characters for information in the story and how he writes, he likes to have control of what exactly his words inspire.
BraveNewWorld is an interesting book in and of itself for what it is, a dystopian society, but what makes it unique is that not only does it explain in great detail what the world is like, but goes over multiple concepts for how much is lost to the creation of such a society. The most prominent area this can be found in is Chapters 16 and 17 where John, then known as the Savage, speaks with Mustapha Mond about everything ‘wrong’ with his society. They go over individuality when John asks ‘“Why don't you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus while you're about it?”’ (Huxley, CH16) and Mustapha replies saying that an alpha can never be...

...﻿To my fellow year 12 students, at this stage you are all studying ‘Aldous Huxley’s BraveNewWorld’ (BNW) for the elective Representing People and Politics. Today I welcome you to this HSC Study Day, explaining to you all, why this text is suitable for Module C.
The novel definitely explores ramifications of future developments in science and technology and its misuse within in humanity, and it displays this notion through the shifting perspectives of certain characters. Here on one hand you have John the savage, who question society and value Arts and literature, who wants freedom & to be an independent individual. On the other hand we have the World State Leader; Mustafa Mond who’s only concern is to keep advancing this dystopian society in excessive consumerist and dehumanising ways. It’s these characters that represent Huxley’s warning in ‘BNW’ that the future representation of society is these people & so we should be careful of who has power and control. Now let’s look at the novel closely, in particular chapters 3, 7 and 18 as they are great examples of what Huxley is trying to warn us all about.
Now I say Chapter 3 is a great interpretation of the people and politics, as it is continuously shifting different viewpoints on this so called ‘BraveNewWorld’. As the Director and Mustapha Mond explain to the boys how the World State works in...

...Literary Criticism- BraveNewWorld
A Utopia is a world that is completely controlled by the government. The government controls every aspect of life in a utopia, and therefore everyone is always happy. In the novel "BraveNewWorld" by Aldous Huxley the setting is a utopia. In this world people are constantly happy, babies are cloned, and, 'everyone belongs to everyone else.' The criticism which I chose was written by Margaret Cheney Dawson, on February 7th, 1932. The argument that Margaret makes is that BraveNewWorld is a, "lugubrious and heavy-handed piece of propaganda." The critic is saying that through the book BraveNewWorld, Aldous Huxley is promoting, and trying to sell a utopian government. I agree with this statement because throughout the book there are examples that prove that Aldous Huxley thinks that a utopian world is a good idea, also through his writing Huxley is implying that a utopian world is the only way humanity can survive.
The most obvious way that Huxley promotes a utopia in his novel, is through the words of a character. When the Savage, John, is talking to the World Controller, Mustapha Mond about the "brave...